Marketers relying on StumbleUpon for referral traffic might want to start experimenting with different services. According to social plugin provider Shareaholic, the company’s traffic is declining.

StumbleUpon has had a rough year. In December, it added Channels which intended to make it easier for consumers to follow companies, media properties, and celebrities. It sounded like a good idea, but the company stopped the beta program six month after it was initially introduced. By June, traffic had dropped 24 percent.

Hoping to revive itself, StumbleUpon launched a major redesign in September. The new look, which borrowed heavily from digital darling Pinterest, doesn’t appear to be paying off. According to Shareaholic, traffic has dropped 53 percent since July. However, we should note that StumbleUpon wraps everything in an iFrame, so even if readers are clicking through to a website, pageviews might not be recorded as referral traffic.

In related news, Pinterest continues to outrank Yahoo in organic traffic — something that initially began in August. It’s also the fourth largest traffic driver to websites just behind Google, direct traffic, and Facebook. We don’t recommend a mass exodus of StumbleUpon in favor of Pinterest, but its lack of growth is something to be aware of.

Over the next couple of months, we suggest paying extra close attention to your analytics to determine which service is driving the most traffic. If you’re unhappy with the results, then it might be time to revisit your content strategy, including utilized services and platforms.

[Via: TechCrunch, Image credit: Scott Beale]